Abstraction
by Trivea
Summary: L, Light, Mello, and Matt are all dead. Near is the only one from the entire Kira ordeal left... or is he? When he finds that the tombs of his idol and rival have been desecrated and the bodies stolen, even the great N finds himself at a loss.
1. Page One

Abstraction

A Death Note Fan-fiction

Disclaimers: I do not own Death Note, Another Note, or any of the derived characters. As a matter of fact, I don't own anything in this except the storyline, which is mah babeh!

SPOILER WARNING FOR BOTH THE END OF DEATH NOTE AND ANOTHER NOTE!

So, yeah, people are going to get mad at me for this, and I'm going to take an overused DN idea and re-work it in a (hopefully) new way, so… we're going to have fun. Beware the darkness! Rated over 16 for graphic description and such, but I trust you know what you can handle.

--

Page One: Awakening

--

Five days before he had met Nate River face-to-face.

Five days before Mikami had killed himself.

Five days before he himself had died.

Was that when it had all begun?

He couldn't remember anymore.

All he knew was that it had to have been his conscience haunting him. L was dead, and that was all there was to it. And the fact remained that no one else had seen the hunched figure watching him, with his eyes wide and staring and his thumbnail in his mouth.

L.

Ryuuzaki.

Ryuuga.

No matter what you called him, the fact that he was still dead didn't change. Once, he held the key to death in his hand. But there was no key to life.

Amendment to that statement – there was no key to the recovery of one's own life. Life was like a poker game, he supposed – a game with Death, who had a poker face impossible to read. Every time you encountered a dangerous situation, you had to show your cards. The ante was your life, lying out there in the middle of the table.

Beat Death's hand, and you get to collect your winnings – you may not be unscathed, but at least you live.

Death's hand beats yours, and he sweeps your life off the table. That's the end of it.

However, he supposed that he had been one to beat Death, but not in the 'defeating' sort of way most people viewed it. More like he beat Death in a race – killing people before Death got to them.

Kira.

Kami-sama, he had been called by some, most loudly by Mikami.

Yagami Light, the man… or rather, the boy, who had beaten Death in that race for the lives of the evil. He was dead himself, and he knew that. Ryuk had promised him that, in the end, he would die with his name inscribed in the pages of the Shinigami's Death Note.

No big deal.

Truly, it was no big deal.

But the pain… the pain had been unimaginable those last few moments of his life. Shot, by Matsuda of all people, and forced to escape only to die like a dog.

But now the pain was gone…

…wasn't it?

No.

No, it wasn't.

It was beginning to return again. God, the pain. He felt as though he was having that heart attack again in reverse. And the bullet holes were beginning to burn again. Ryuk had said that he couldn't go to Heaven or Hell, so was this what was waiting for him for the rest of eternity?

The pain began to become so great that his vision went white, painful in and of itself after the black nothingness that was all he had been able to see. Searing pain in his arms, his chest, his legs, his back, and his head. Everywhere he could think of hurt.

And Yagami Light, after three days of being dead, woke up.

--

It was only appropriate.

Near sighed a bit and closed his eyes as the car he was in slowly made its way towards the graveyard. He hadn't had a chance to visit Mello or Matt yet, and hadn't visited L in a very long time. Years, in fact. Now that the Kira case was finally over, what with Light's death, it was only fitting that he at least tell them that it was done.

L needed to know that he had been right. Well, L was always right, but he felt the need to tell him, confirm his 100 percent suspicions, and tell him that it was all over.

Kira was dead.

It was all over.

Near sighed a little and looked down at the three roses he held in his hand – red, yellow, and white. Sometimes, he regretted the fact that he and Mello and, subsequently, Matt had been on such bad terms. After all, as children of Wammy's House, they were almost like a family – albeit the most dysfunctional family he had ever seen in his entire life, what with the bitter rivalries and the pointing guns at each other thing.

Honestly, he had nothing against Matt. Yes, the guy had been Mello's lap dog, and yes, it had been highly pathetic, but it didn't change the fact that Matt mainly followed Mello because he needed someone with Mello's aggressive, over-bearing personality to follow. Matt had never desired to be L, and if Mello was an unorthodox L-prototype, then Matt was an unorthodox Watari-prototype.

The car slowly rolled to a stop outside the graveyard and Near opened the door, making his way up the path to a large stone mausoleum. He walked past the rows of above-ground graves, twisting around a number of corners before reaching a large steel door set into the white marble of the wall.

Reaching into his back pocket, Near produced a keycard and swiped the magnetic strip through the lock. He then entered in his keycode on the keypad beside the door and waited for the hydraulic locks to deactivate. He then waited for the huge, heavy door to slide open before making his way inside, reflecting on the sheer paranoia around L's body.

This room was originally supposed to house L's body, and his alone. There were, however, five graves in the room – four in a four-line star pattern around a large L carved into the stone floor, and one back in the corner, just out of sight but within reasonable distance. When Near had discovered that they were merely going to bury Mello in the main graveyard and dispose of Matt's body completely, he had raised such hell about it they hadn't had much of a choice but to put both of them in the room with L. The room had been renovated for the changes, and Watari had actually been moved from his plot to the crypt, kept in the corner just out of sight but not out of reach, as he had always been in life.

The first grave, just under the 'L', was the body of the man who used that same letter as identification. On the stone slab laid above his tomb was the same 'L' carved sharply into it. To his left was Mello's body, with an 'M' carved into the top slab. Above the 'L' was Matt's body, with a blank slab laid over his corpse. And to the right of L's body was an empty grave with the letter 'N' carved into it.

After all, everyone had to die sometime.

But Near knew that something was wrong the instant he stepped into the room. Something was very, very wrong. And upon reaching the center of the marble room, it wasn't hard to discover what the problem was.

It wasn't just his future grave that was empty, with the slab laying propped up beside it.

The four graves around the 'L' were all empty.

And they were all completely clean.

--

Pain, cold, stiffness, and soreness. Those were the first three things that Light was aware of as he laid in the dark, the bullet holes in his body burning and his heart beating so quickly he felt as though his chest would burst.

Calm down.

What the hell was going on here?

He slowly cracked one eye open, just a little, to gauge the amount of light in the room.

Too much.

He quickly shut his eyes again.

Continuing the mental chant of 'calm down', Light attempted to breathe and try to take in his surroundings without opening his eyes. Either the pain was beginning to slowly subside or he was growing numb to it due to the cold. However, the reason didn't matter – what did matter was he was beginning to be able to think again, and that was the important thing. Now, what could he tell about his surroundings without looking at them?

He had already established that it was cold, so that wasn't something didn't need to be stated again. He was on a bed, and there was a bright light hanging right above his head. And something… something smelled terrible. Rotten. Like… dead flesh that had been left alone for far too long.

Oh, God, was he in the same room as a corpse?

Now he had to fight to keep his gorge from rising in addition to trying to assess his surroundings. While death didn't bother him, the bodies, after too long, did.

Wait…

He was dead, wasn't he?

Was that smell coming from him?

The thought was enough to force Light to open his eyes, an action he immediately regretted. It was bright, too bright. Blindingly so. He turned his head to the side and pain shot from the base of his skull down his spine, spreading out through his limbs.

Look.

Look at your surroundings, dammit.

He managed to adjust his eyes to the light and looked down at himself. He was wearing his best suit, which he could only assume he either had been or was going to be buried in – blood had begun to soak through the material, leaving it glossy under the fluorescent light. As far as he could tell, beyond that his appearance was perfectly normal.

Movement in the corner of the room caught his eye. "You're awake," a quiet voice commented emotionlessly. "I was beginning to fear you'd never stop screaming."

He knew that voice.

Wincing, Light forced his head to slowly turn towards the source of that voice.

Impossible.

It couldn't be.

"Welcome back, Yagami-kun," L said quietly from his place in the corner, his fork poised over the slice of cake in his hand. "How are you feeling?"


	2. Page Two

Abstraction

A Death Note Fan-fiction

Disclaimers: Nothing has changed since chapter one. However, I would like to add that there will be nothing even remotely resembling romance in any of these pages. I'm also working on the assumption that Misa committed suicide for the time being, as that was what I gathered from the ending of Death Note. If that's not right, I would appreciate someone telling me ASAP! Thanks!

And yes. L is out of character. There is a reason, I swear to God. And I'm using an old Death Note cliché in this chapter, so don't yell at me, because I warned you!

--

Page Two: Lies in Darkness

--

"L…"

The detective didn't so much as blink as Light stared at him, dumbstruck. "What…"

"Don't try to talk," L interrupted, licking icing off of his fork without taking his eyes off the other male. "You've been dead for three days. That sort of takes a toll on your vocal chords."

"… you… dead…" Light managed to say, his voice hoarse and cracking painfully.

L smiled at him. It was a cold, emotionless smile, but a smile none-the-less. "My, my, haven't we become eloquent in the past years?" he asked, his smile revealing the hint of a grin. He slowly stood and placed his now empty plate on the floor, walking over to where Light was laying.

"I'm sure you're hungry, Yagami-kun," he remarked idly, quirking an eyebrow. "Well… perhaps I will see what I can do to assist you. It does, however, depend. After all, I know what you did, Kira."

Light stared up at him, completely unable to move or protest. He was physically unable to move, and the protest wasn't feasible as he had all but admitted that he was Kira to L with that smile. That smile right before L had died.

Nevertheless, Light gathered his strength painfully and parted his lips to speak. The words were stopped this time, not by L's voice, but by L's hand firmly covering his mouth. "I told you not to talk, didn't I?" he asked quietly, not moving his hand.

Light blinked a few times as an overwhelming smell of powder filled his nose. They stared at each other for a few moments before L moved his hand and shuffled away a bit. As he did, Light realizes exactly how strong the smell of decay was in the room and he felt himself gag painfully.

"Do you not like the smell, Yagami-kun?" L asked quietly as he poured sugar into a mug, adding tea afterwards. "There is nothing you need to fear. The smell of the dead is truly nothing to fear. After all, some of it is in fact coming from you."

"Some…?" Light began weakly. L didn't seem inclined to turn around, and continued as though he hadn't heard him.

"I suppose," L began a little reluctantly, raising the cup to his lips as he paused, "…I suppose you're wondering how exactly it is that both of us are alive. Well, while it is cliché, I suppose I should tell you," he said, turning around slowly and grabbing the back of the chair he'd been sitting in. He pulled it over towards the bed Light was laying on and sat, the image of L looking down at him in the familiar position enough to send chills down Light's spine.

"After the discovery of the Death Note, at least on our part, I began to wonder if it had a counterpart of sorts. I suppose… a Life Note would be the most appropriate name for it."

A Life Note? To tell the truth, Light had actually wondered the same thing. Misa and, indirectly, Mikami had asked him about the existence of one as well. However, Light had long ago dismissed the possibility of such a thing as asinine. There was no way to bring people back to life.

Then again… a notebook with the power to kill would have struck him as stupid at age sixteen.

"It turns out that they do exist," L said as he sipped at his tea, "though… not in the sense that one would think. When you think of bringing someone back to life, what do you usually think of?"

Light wasn't sure if he was actually looking for a response with that question. Honestly, what he figured probably happened was, somehow, the person just… appeared. He hadn't really put too much thought into it, having tossed the idea out the proverbial window nearly as soon as he thought it.

L reached over to the table beside Light's bed and produced a thin white notebook, like an inverted Death Note. The cover bore no words, and the pages were black, but it looked pretty damn close.

"The Life Note," L said quietly, looking at it as he held it up, "is actually quite a complicated tool, far more complicated than the Death Note. All you need to use the Death Note is the person's face and name; a fact you are undoubtedly already well acquainted with. But with the Life Note, you must have the person's real name, face, and their corpse.

"I would like to think, after your demonstration of intellect in the past, that you wouldn't have to think too hard on that. But as you were obviously outsmarted by Near, I no longer have faith in your mind," L said, the undertone of mocking laughter in his voice making Light stare. What was wrong with him?

"It's only natural that you should have the corpse of the person you desire to revive," L said as he opened the Life Note in his hand, thumbing through it idly as he spoke. "All the Life Note does is bring the person's soul back into their body. If you leave that body buried in the ground, they will just suffocate in their coffin again, or die of terror, as taphophobia is quite a common ailment among humans. However, it's quite simple to merely remove the body from either the ground, an above-ground coffin, or otherwise.

"However, the Life Note is not something you would want to use on the people you like," L said quietly as he directed his attentions back to Light. "As a matter of fact, it's really only something you would use in two circumstances – one, if you absolutely have to, for information or something like that… two, if you absolutely despise the person you're bringing back."

"… why… bring back… one… you ha… ate…" Light rasped, his face screwing up into a pained wince at the feeling in his throat.

L smiled again down at Light. "Well, you should know the answer to that right now, Yagami-kun. After all, I brought you back with the Life Note. Thankfully, you hadn't been buried yet, so that saved me the trouble of digging you out of the ground. Then again, as Kira, I wouldn't be surprised if you would have had a huge state burial, or something… honestly, I didn't pay much attention…

"Forgive me. I digress. The point is that you would want to bring back someone you hate for no other reason than to make them suffer in as many ways as you possibly can. You're experiencing the Life Note right now. The Life Note causes whoever is coming back to life to experience all the pain and suffering of their death again, just in reverse. All wounds, broken bones, burns, slashes, and other symptoms of your death hurt as badly as they did the moment you died, and slowly work their way back until you are no longer in danger of death. It's that simple.

"Do you want to know why I brought you back?" L asked as he stood, placing his tea and the Life Note on the table beside Light's head. He then reached down out of Light's line of sight. After a moment, a clicking sound filled the room, and L began to lift the bed by the head, straightening it until Light was completely vertical. He hadn't realized until that point that he was actually strapped to the bed.

L moved so he was standing in front of Light and placed both hands on either side of Light's face, staring into his eyes. "I want you to suffer," he said simply. "You can bring people back an infinite amount of times with the Life Note, whether they died by the Death Note or any other means. Using that logic, I can kill you in one of the most painful ways I can imagine and then bring you back, forcing you to experience it twice, once as you die and once as you heal. Then, once you're completely better, I can just kill you again and bring you back once more…"

He laughed a little and backed away. "Dreadful chain of events, isn't it? And you don't have any way to escape, because you have no way to defend yourself against me. Even if I unstrapped you, you wouldn't have the capacity to run away. But you can't deny that you brought this upon yourself, Yagami-kun. All you've done to everyone, and all you did to me… you ruined not only my life, but the lives of millions around the world. It doesn't just count all those that you killed, but their families and friends as well. So now, I'm taking it upon myself to punish you."

L stepped away before turning and walking a few steps towards a table that held the teapot he had presumably used earlier, a half-eaten cake, an urn, and a small palm-pilot. Light had the opportunity to look around the room and immediately wished he hadn't.

Back in the corner was a metal gurney with a large, thin serrated knife lying across it. Beside that was a table that was covered in metal objects of all kinds – fishhook-type claws, different sizes and shapes of knives, a length of piano wire, a bottle of oil and a can of gasoline with several lighters lying beside them, and a multitude of apparatuses that Light couldn't even begin to imagine the uses of. But that wasn't what he regretted seeing.

Attached to the wall beyond the metal gurney and hanging by its hands was a full skeleton. A pile of burial clothes was lying in a heap on the ground beside it. Beside the skeleton was a wooden table.

On the wooden table was a corpse.

It was no one Light had ever met. He wasn't wearing burial clothes – though Light had never heard of anyone being buried in their normal clothes. His striped shirt, vest, and jeans were filled with bullet holes that had gone black around the edges, as though blood had been there for quite some time. His skin was still mostly intact, though it was beginning to fall off of his body in a few places. Most of his hair remained in his head, though some of it had fallen out onto the table. Mostly around his mouth, eyes, ears, and the places where his skin was falling off, his flesh was beginning to turn strange, rotten colors.

"Are you feeling… disturbed, Yagami-kun?" L asked quietly as he watched Light's reaction to the skeleton and the corpse. "Both of these people died either directly or indirectly due to your… escapades with the Death Note," he said simply, shrugging a bit as he walked over to the wooden table.

"Mail Jeevas," he said quietly, placing his hand on the corpse's chest gently. "He was gunned down after aiding Mihael Keehl to kidnap Takada. I trust that, though you didn't actually meet him, you are quite familiar with the incident. Apparently, he was killed for crimes against Kira-sama – therefore, his death was indirectly your fault. And him…"

Sighing a little, L walked over to the skeleton. "I doubt you're familiar with the intricacies of the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases, so I won't go into the details about this man. But this man was killed by the Death Note. Again, your fault."

Walking away again, L went over to the table with the urn and lifted it up. "Now, the one thing I've been wanting to test is how the Life Note would deal with someone who has been burned to death," he said thoughtfully as he carried the urn over to the metal gurney and opened the lid. "Since there technically is no more body, it would be hard to bring a soul back to it. But the rules say you can bring back absolutely anyone. So I think it's worth a try, don't you?"

Light just stared at L in complete shock, unsure of what to say. L smiled, picking up a feather and a small knife from the table beside the gurney. From his expression, it was obvious he was… excited, to say the least.

--

"I want to know what's going on, and I want to know now."

"We don't know. We honestly don't. No one knew anything about it until you brought it up, so we have nothing to go on."

Near closed his eyes, irritation showing plainly on his face. Sometimes, these people could truly be useless. "You did at least search the room, didn't you?" he asked dryly, quirking an eyebrow at the men in his employ, whom he had summoned immediately to look into the little problem regarding the missing bodies of his idol, rival, and rival's… servant, he supposed.

"Of course we searched it!" one of the men said a little heatedly. "We didn't find anything, I told you that!"

"Absolutely nothing?"

"Besides your fingerprints on the keypad, no!"

"Does that not strike you as odd?" Near asked quietly. "That you found absolutely nothing in the room? Absolutely… nothing?"

He stared at them expectantly. When none of them responded, he sighed a little, his annoyance growing ever plainer. "You found my fingerprints on the keypad. Fine. Did you find any other fingerprints?"

"Well… no, sir, but-…"

"And it doesn't strike you as odd that you found no fingerprints in a room in which massive stone slabs had to be lifted by hand in order to uncover the bodies, not to mention cover them in the first place?" the white haired man interrupted, his voice rising.

The men stared at him before looking at each other. Yeah, good point.

Near sighed forcefully through his clenched teeth and hunched a bit, raising his finger to his mouth and biting it irritatedly – an action he only performed when he could think of absolutely nothing to go on. "…go," he said finally, dismissing the men without looking at them. "I need to think. Go."

The men required no further encouragement as they hurriedly left the room. Near pushed his foot against the ground, using the momentum to slide his rolling chair across the room and bump into the desk. He quickly turned around and grabbed the bucket of dice nearby, beginning to build. He had read it before. In a long note that Mello had left. He had read it.

But, for the life of him, he couldn't remember a damn word of it.

All he remembered was that little detail.

All the fingerprints had been wiped away.

--

…don't hit me.


	3. Page Three

Abstraction

A Death Note fan-fiction

Disclaimers: Again, not much. Glad that the cliché is working so well for all you out in internet land. And there's a bit (or a lot) of disturbing imagery in this chapter, and there will probably be disturbing imagery in the rest of the story. Consider yourself warned… And also, Near has a train of thought that led to the title of this fic. Abstract thought hurts my brain.

ALSO! VERY IMPORTANT! Unless you want a mega huge spoiler, do NOT read this chapter unless you've finished Another Note! I'm dead serious, people, this could potentially ruin the whole book for you. However, if you do want a spoiler, read on heedlessly…

--

Page Three: Blood and Fire

--

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Wh-what?"

"You're looking at me like you've never seen me before. You know me, Yagami-kun. You know me very well. Please, tell me why you're looking at me in that manner."

Light, struggling to keep his eyes off the corpse of the boy called Mail Jeevas, determinedly fixed his eyes on L – the fourth least appealing sight in the room, after the skeleton, corpse, and tray of metal instruments. "What… ha… happen… ed… to y… you…?" he asked quietly, his vocal chords and throat still protesting against speech. He was, at the very least, becoming more coherent. That was a good sign.

"You did," L answered calmly as he poured the grayish black contents of the urn on the metal gurney, a slow sweeping motion of his arm leaving it a trail rather than a pile. He then placed the lid back and set the urn back on the table, shifting the knife to his left hand while keeping the feather in his right. "You cut me down in my prime, Yagami-kun. I could have done so much if it hadn't been for you. I even had a plan. A plan that was so great… well, never mind that," he shrugged idly, walking over to Light, his bare feet padding gently on the concrete floor.

"I suppose you're wondering how I got the Life Note?" he asked quietly as he studied Light carefully. "Simple, actually. I was brought back to life with it, and the old man who used the Life Note on me died. Simple as that, right? Of course, I didn't want to bring him back with it. He was… hit by a car. Tragic, really."

Something in L's eyes failed to convince Light that the detective truly believed it was tragic.

"So I came back to Japan and found out that you had been killed." He slowly rolled up the sleeve on Light's right arm, revealing the bare skin, still deathly pale. "Heart attack, they said. How… ironic," he said quietly, his lips twitching upwards in amusement. With a quick movement of his left arm, the knife in his hand sliced through Light's flesh like butter. Light let out a strangled cry of surprise mixed with this new pain – the old pains had only just begun to fade.

L leaned over and set the knife on the bedside table, picking up the Life Note. "Sorry, Yagami-kun," he apologized, quite insincerely, as he flicked open the pages and pressed the tip of the feather against the blood oozing down towards Light's wrist. "You see, the words on the Life Note must be written in blood. As I already had to cut myself to bring you back, I believe that the least you can do is make yourself useful as an inkwell."

He slowly scrawled a name that Light couldn't read, blowing on the words to dry them before setting it back down on the table and retrieving a bandage, wrapping it around the cut. "Now, let's watch and see what happens, shall we?" he asked with a smile before looking at the ashes on the gurney.

--

He didn't understand it. And he didn't know why he didn't understand it. Reaching up slowly, Near flicked the tower of dice that had formed in front of him, watching as they crashed to the table and bounced off in different directions, some escaping to the floor, some rolling around the table.

There was something here… something obvious. Something that he should know but didn't. And there was probably a link that he hadn't discovered, much like the link L hadn't discovered in the Kira case.

The Death Note.

That was the link L hadn't discovered.

However, as this detail was far from being inconspicuous, he hardly patted himself on the back over this revelation. Leaning forward, he picked up two of the dice and swept the rest away with his arm, leaving a clean expanse of desk in front of him. He then rolled the dice.

Seven.

The Death Note was the link that L couldn't discover.

He rolled the dice again.

Three.

If this was on the same scale as the Kira case, there must be a link he hadn't discovered either.

He rolled the dice a third time.

Eight.

He had nothing to go on, except that one detail.

Eleven.

All of the fingerprints had been wiped away.

Nine.

All wiped away.

Five.

But why?

Near stared down at the table as the two red dots stared back at him. Snake eyes. If Near had been superstitious, he would have suspected that he was on the wrong track with all of this, and that the dice were trying to tell him that.

Two.

And he would believe that this entire escapade was fruitless.

Two.

But that one detail was irritating him.

Two.

All wiped away.

Two…

Reaching up, he began twisting a curl of hair around his index finger. Maybe the dice weren't telling him something, exactly, but more something he was using to help put his finger on something.

Two. Two what? Two… links. Two clues. Two… two…

Near sighed. He wasn't getting anywhere with this.

… or was he?

He didn't have two clues, and he didn't suspect two separate links. One link, one clue. L had that.

L… Two. Two Ls.

But there weren't two Ls.

There were three.

L, M, N. Or, at least, there had been. Then again, maybe he shouldn't be looking at the technical side of it. In the literal sense, were there two Ls?

No.

But there was someone who wanted, not to be L, but to surpass L in every way, shape, and form imaginable. He wanted to step on L, make him grovel and beg and plead. He wanted to sabotage L so badly he even pretended to _be_ L. He wanted to make the world forget the ominous letter L, and forever remember the letter…

… what letter?

…

Near slammed his fists on the table. He was so close to the answer that he could taste it. He just knew he was. However, a pertinent detail was flitting just out of reach in the corners of his mind. Quickly standing, he moved the two snake eye dice to the side and gathered the rest of the dice in a pile, including those that had made a valiant escape to the floor. He then began reconstructing the English alphabet in dice along the length of the table in good sized letters, until he had A through Z in a perfect row, with the two snake eye dice right in front of his seat in the middle.

He unceremoniously swept away the L, M, and N, as he knew that the owners of those letters were not the ones who were in control here. After a moment of thought, he also swept away the K.

Not K.

Not Kira.

Twenty-two letters left.

Two and two.

Two.

He looked at the second letter of the alphabet – B. That had been it. Plan B. Beyond Birthday. The copy that failed. Another L. He had been almost as intelligent as L. They were so close in ability it would have taken a close observer a long time to realize the miniscule difference between the two.

But it was there. And B hated it.

And he would do anything to get back at L, wouldn't he?

Near began reconstructing the tower slowly. This would require thought, to say the least.

--

Nothing had happened.

Yet.

Light stared at the pile of ashes on the gurney with the sort of morbid fascination held by train wreck witnesses. Something was going to happen; he just didn't know what it was or when it would be. How long would it take? The bandage on his arm was tightly bound to stem the bleeding, but he could feel it growing wet.

Something would happen.

And it did.

Smoke slowly began rising from the ashes. It was grayish-white, like cigarette smoke, and only visible due to the halogen lights. "It's starting," L said quietly, the smile apparent in his voice. "Now, this is how it's going to work. I'm really doing this mostly for experimental purposes, and when his lips finish forming, I'll gag him. I don't want to run the risk of his screams getting too loud.

"I've never resurrected anyone whose body was burned, as I've said, but this is what I think will happen. The cause of death was a heart attack, and his body was destroyed after death. However, his body cannot heal until he is alive, as evidenced by both you and me. Therefore, the Life Note will go as far as re-constructing his body to a charred corpse before bringing him back to life, and then will resume healing him, as that state would kill him. At least, this is my theory."

The smoke rising from the ashes had begun to darken until it was an ashen gray-black, like the substance rising from a smokestack. After a minute of this, the ashes slowly began moving on their own. It was truly the strangest sight Light had ever witnessed. The smoke above the ashes then slowly began descending again, back into the ashes, as though they were being inhaled. Slowly, the ashes began looking less like ashes and more like a pile of burned flesh.

Slowly, it began growing. It was almost like a burning in reverse – the pile of flesh slowly began to gain the shape of a torso, and was sprouting things that looked like limbs. The arms sprouted stubby, fingerless hands, and the legs grew things that almost resembled feet. As the fingers and toes began appearing, a head was sprouting as well.

The entire process took about two minutes. In fact, it still more closely resembled a creature that had been turned on a spit than a human being. The blackened flesh was cracked all over, showing deep crimson in spots, and it looked like it would begin flaking if anyone so much as walked past it.

Nothing happened for a few moments. L and Light merely stared at the corpse in silence. The room was quiet except for the gentle buzzing of the lamp overhead. It was, truly, the most horrible thing Light had ever laid eyes on in his entire life. It was almost like stepping into some kind of sick video game, where he was less the hero who stepped in and saved everyone and more the victim who would be found dead on level six.

A bit of flesh fell from the body as a rasping sound filled the room. It took Light a minute to realize that it was the body on the table taking its first breath in an extremely long time. A horrible, quiet cracking sound followed as, mostly fueled by terror, the eyes snapped open, revealing bright green eyes coated with a fogged, milky film, a bit of liquid running from the corner of his eye down his face.

L smiled a bit. "Ah, it worked. I was right." Light could sympathize with the man on the table – after all, he knew that horror could make a body do things that it would be incapable of otherwise. Slowly, with more cracking, the mouth opened in a silent scream. Obviously, the vocal chords were still destroyed.

Acting as though there was nothing strange about the body coming back to life in the middle of the room, L crossed over to the table and pulled off a towel, which he gently laid across the man's waist. "After all, we must protect decency, and all that," he said with a quiet laugh, smiling at the man who was still trying to scream. All that escaped his throat, however, was a rasping rush of air.

Slowly, blood began to ooze out of the cracks in the skin. It was thick and dark, like a syrup, and when it dripped down onto the gurney a thread remained attached to the skin. It was truly fascinating to watch, if not pleasant – the body was, in fact, being healed slowly, as the red patches on the blackened skin very slowly began to spread.

"He will be unable to talk for quite some time, I would imagine. However, he is currently deaf, dumb, and blind, and will remain that way until his body heals further. But I was right, as I always am," L laughed as he walked away from the table, walking over to Light.

"Do you see, Yagami-kun? I am the best. _I _am the best. There is no one who is better than me. Not even you. I have no equals, and I never will. Is this proof enough that I have defeated you?" he asked quietly as he held up the Life Note.

This wasn't right. This wasn't the L that he had fought and tried to outsmart for so long. This wasn't the L he had been handcuffed to while attempting to work on the Kira case. What had happened to change him so much?

"Ah, but I am being rude," L said quietly, a smile spreading on his lips. "I don't think you two have been… properly introduced. I don't know if he can hear, but it's worth a try." He slowly walked over to the gurney until he was on the opposite side of it, staring at Light over the body.

"Yagami Light, it is my utmost pleasure to introduce Mihael Keehl to you. Mello, I would like you to meet Kira."


	4. Page Four

Abstraction

A Death Note fan-fiction

Disclaimers: None. And for little dog on – yeah, I know about the heart attack, but the thing was Mello's body was destroyed in the fire anyway. The human body can't heal while dead, so all the Life Note did was restore his body to a state in which his soul could survive before reversing the heart attack. And since he would then be in danger of dying from the severe burn injuries and the Life Note brings people back to life with no immediate danger of dying, it has to heal his burn wounds as well. Sorry if that confused anyone.

--

Page Four: Toys

--

The only thing he had felt was the wire slicing through his neck. It had been insanely painful, but not for very long. It had hurt for perhaps a minute, which had seemed like a century, before he had died.

"Not painful enough…"

However, the pain was now unbearable. Light's mouth was open in a silent scream, vocal chords still severed, as L placed the Life Note and the bloody piano wire on the table. If he had been conscious to anything but the pain, Light would have felt the blood cascading down his chest and heard it splattering to the floor at his feet. But nothing mattered except the pain.

It had been four days since he had witnessed Mello brought back to life. After two days, L had gagged the blond. His voice had begun to come back and he was nearly constantly screaming from pain.

The time dragged on as the pain gradually ebbed. Well, it didn't ebb so much as Light slowly began to feel himself growing numb to it. He glanced over as his ears began to function again, his eyes first settling on Mello. He was unconscious, probably getting some much needed sleep, and a IV drip constantly fed water directly into his dehydrated system. There was no telling how long it would be before he was awake and screaming again.

Over the past four days, Light had been living in what could only be called Hell. He had died three times over – first, a simple bullet to the heart. The second time, it was suffocation. The third time, and the most recent, had been piano wire slitting his throat.

"Now, Yagami-kun, I suppose this is sort of… severe compared to the simple heart attacks your victims suffered. But perhaps this will cut down on the number of times I have to punish you. After all, eventually even I will grow tired and wish for you to simply remain dead. You can't expect me to stay here resurrecting you forever, can you?" L said with a gentle smile, patting Light's cheek a couple of times before walking off.

Light let out a painful, gurgling wheeze, a bubble of blood expanding from his lips before popping, splattering his face. He could feel the rattling in his throat as he forced himself to draw another breath, feeling the wound on his neck closing as the time passed. Soon, the blood began to dry over the other dried blood that flecked his clothing, turning his once-white shirt a rusty brown color.

It was too much for him to take. Too much for him to handle. Closing his eyes, he allowed his head to fall to his chest, the pain of the movement lost in the wave of unconsciousness that overtook him.

Smiling to himself, L watched as the brunette fainted before turning his attentions back to Mello, who had woken up upon hearing the screaming. Getting to his feet, he walked over to the still-burnt blond. Bright green eyes followed him, still glazed over but having had sight restored.

"I suppose you're wondering why I brought you back?" he asked with a bit of a smile as he sat on the edge of the metal gurney and looked down at Mello, his thumb placed in his mouth. "I know your senses have returned to you, even if your body is still quite… broken. You can hear, even if you still can't move all that well. I suppose a bit of atrophication has set in, what with you… not moving and all.

"The reason I brought you back, Mello-kun, is quite simple," he continued as he got to his feet again and walked to the table that held all the instruments, his feet making sickening splattering sounds as he walked through Light's blood. After a moment of rummaging, he came back with a small folder which contained what appeared to be simply a stack of paper – merely a normal file.

"This is the reason I brought you back," L said quietly, extracting the first page and holding it up for Mello to see. "Hmm… perhaps you can't read yet… I'll read it to you then, shall I?" he asked with a smile before turning it around and beginning to read.

"When Beyond Birthday committed his third murder, he attempted an experiment. Namely, to see if it were possible for a human being to die of internal hemorrhaging without rupturing any organs. Specifically, he drugged the victim so they fell unconscious, tied them up, and proceeded to beat their left arm thoroughly, being careful not to break the skin. He was hoping to bring about enough hemorrhaging to cause death from loss of blood, but this attempt, sadly, ended in failure."

Smiling to himself, L slipped the paper back into the folder and laid it on the gurney where he had been sitting moments before. "Now, Mello-kun, do you really think it's appropriate to write down things like this, giving more publicity to the L.A.B.B. murder cases than necessary? After all, someone might get… ideas. We can't have that. That's why I collected this note you wrote before you died – there are some sick and twisted people out there, Mello-kun."

Breathing rapidly through his nose, Mello just stared up at L in pure horror. He couldn't do much else with the gag in his mouth. Smiling serenely, L stood again and placed the folder of papers back where he had gotten them, retrieving a small glass bottle and a syringe. He quickly filled the syringe with the contents of the bottle and went back to Mello, injecting the liquid into a vein in his neck.

"There ya go," he said pleasantly as he patted Mello's head, watching the blond quickly slump into unconsciousness. It was a strong sedative, but it was also rich in nutrients – it would be depressing to have gone through all the trouble to bring him back just to have him starve to death.

Turning, he focused his attention on Matt, walking towards him. He picked up the Life Note as he passed it, running his fingertip through Light's blood.

--

"It doesn't make any sense."

He had watched the security tape repeatedly, but had seen nothing. Not even the smallest glitch when the tape had been changed. Usually, there was the smallest jump – but no, this just looked as though the coffin lids, all at once, disappeared and reappeared in their open positions revealing nothing inside. Not a glitch in the entire process.

The employees at the cemetery swore up, down, and sideways that they had seen absolutely no one enter the mausoleum until Near himself had. He had set some of his men to watching all the security tapes to see if they could find something – ANYthing – but, so far, no luck.

Near himself was sitting in the middle of the floor, the dice scattered around the room where they had fallen when they had ceased being helpful to him. In addition to that, the lettered cards dotted the floor, the only ones near him the 'B' card with his L and Mello fingerpuppets sitting on it. In addition, he had made a Matt fingerpuppet – he had seen no need before, as he was always with Mello, but now that he wasn't so sure he figured he might as well make one.

The paper and the puppets were sitting beside him – in front of him was a large stack of papers in a scrawl that almost forced him back into his childhood. He had finally managed to locate a copy of Mello's L.A.B.B. murder cases note – he had forgotten that he had copied it and filed it away before returning it to Roger. As it hadn't been terribly pertinent to the Kira case he hadn't really taken much of it in when he had first read it, but now he was absorbing it as though it was somehow important.

Rue Ryuuzaki was dead – he knew that much. He hadn't needed the information in the note to tell him that. Which meant that it couldn't be Beyond Birthday doing this… but it was obvious that whoever _was_ doing it was taking lessons from Plan B.

Not B… and not A, either, as he was also dead. Obviously not L. But he didn't know anything about anyone else in between, or even if there _had_ been anyone in between. Certainly there had been, as it was a rather illogical jump from B to L, but he didn't know if any of them were dead, or alive, or why they had failed where L had succeeded.

Would one of them do this from some sense of rivalry directed at L?

Did that even make sense?

And why take Mello and Matt too, if indeed the same person had done it?

Perhaps a Kira supporter. It was entirely likely. After all, Mikami had been astoundingly intelligent, if blind where his Kami-sama had been concerned. And a little off-his-guard when he thought everything was going his way. But he had been a lawyer, and a successful one, which proved that it wasn't just homeless nutballs and teenage girls who sung Kira's praises. After all, most of the world had been behind him by the time Yagami had finally died.

In that case, it stood to reason why they would have been able to locate L's grave – his funeral hadn't been publicized, understandably, and he had been moved from his original burial site to his true burial site in order to throw people off. It would have taken someone very, very intelligent to merely find out where he was, much less do what they had done to the tape, not to mention flat getting in.

His eyes skimmed the L.A.B.B. note for the fourth time – since he had already read it, his eyes now flew to key words and took in different phrases that appeared important. He would go with the reasoning that it was a Kira supporter for now, who had somehow picked up some tricks from B. If that was the case, whoever they were looking for was bound to be dangerous. So he began studying the attributes he could pick up of B from this note. He had never met the man himself, and L had only mentioned him in passing. Roger refused to talk about him.

Reaching up to rub his temples, Near couldn't help feeling that this was all quickly spiraling into a bad dream that was eventually going to end up with his death.

--

"It hurts, doesn't it?"

The mindless screaming continued.

Mello didn't move, nor did Light. Matt's back arched as he continued to scream, fresh blood staining his vest from the movement. Blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth and towards his forehead from the angle he had pushed himself into, his hands twitching uselessly.

His voice began cracking under the strain of his screams, but he continued. Sighing, L rubbed his ear and continued to watch. He would stop eventually – they always did. Where the skin had been rotting on the gamer new skin was growing, attaching itself to the old skin and leaving strange red lines, like a jigsaw piece that _almost_ fit right, but not quite. Those too would disappear.

"Poor mindless slave," L said with a sigh as Matt's voice finally gave out. The redhead thrashed, staining the wooden table underneath him with blood that looked almost black in the weird lighting of the room. "You should have known that following him around would have gotten you killed, Mail."

Horrified eyes snapped over to him, his voice cracking as he attempted to say something. His lips formed what looked like an 'L', but the sound that came out didn't even remotely sound like a word. It was just a croak.

"Hmm… shouldn't have screamed so much. Can't hear you," he said pleasantly, smiling down at the other male. "I know you're in better condition than Mello was when he first woke up. Then again, he was cremated, in a way – you were just shot, right, Matt-kun?"

The eyes watching him widened as he felt Matt's trembling increase. The corners of L's smile twitched as he watched the boy's reactions. Yes, this was why they had been at Wammy's – they were geniuses, of course. No one gave Matt credit because he was only number three, but what a hell of an achievement.

He mouthed what looked like 'I'm dead'.

"No, not dead," L said, shaking his head. "I mean… yes, you were dead, but you aren't any longer. I took care of that. It's all quite amusing, wouldn't you agree?"

The look on Matt's face conveyed anything but amusement.

"Well… don't worry. I won't be the only one laughing when this is over."


	5. Page Five

Abstraction

A Death Note fan-fiction

Disclaimers: The plot is getting weird because I've totally lost it and am attempting to recover it. Sorry in advance. Hey, at least I'm honest.

---

Page Five: Ethereal

---

The room was blessedly cold. An odd sort of cold, surely – a cold that felt like it didn't belong anywhere on earth. But that might have been due to the strange, sudden relief from the burns marring his flesh, radiating heat until he felt as though you could effectively cook something on his chest.

He was healing, but it was a slow process. The gag around his head cut into the corners of his mouth where the still burned flesh ached, blood mixed with other unspeakable fluids soaking the material around his lips.

Shuddering, Mello wondered where this cold was coming from. He knew what was going on now, but had no way to tell Kira about it. His half-glazed eyes slid over to where Light hung, dead again. L was gone off somewhere, as he tended to do – not like there was any danger in any of his captives leaving. Mello couldn't move anything but his eyes. Matt couldn't walk, lest the tentative healing layers over his bullet wounds open and spill the blood that the Life Note had been kind enough to replenish for him.

Light would have the hardest time moving, considering that he had to have his limbs sewn back on before he could be brought back to life. L had presumably gone to fetch equipment for just that very thing.

Mello tried to concentrate on the cold yet again. The metal gurney beneath him was frigid, though it shouldn't have been because of his body sucking the cold out of it to be replaced with his own ungodly body temperature. He wanted to throw up, but was afraid to because of both the pain and what it would mean for loss of fluids. He had heard enough about the Life Note from the man who had brought him back to know what was going on, but he knew no specific details.

He doubted L did, either.

Training his eyes back on the ceiling, Mello forced himself to concentrate. It was hard to see anything, as his eyes had only recently begun to function again. The cold seemed to be coming from the left side of his body, away from Kira and Matt. He began to notice light from that side of the room, as well – a soft white light that countered the harsh fluorescent bulbs hanging over his head.

Slowly, Mello's eyes shifted to the other side of the room and he froze. It was advantageous that he was too shocked to scream, or he would have done so and hurt himself rather badly, in addition to waking Matt up and probably making him hurt himself. But still, shock registered clearly in his eyes nevertheless.

Standing on the left side of his body, gazing blankly into the room, was a large creature, radiating the soft white light and the cold that Mello felt covering everything in the room. The thing was androgynous, all white, with semi-humanoid features. Its face was wrapped tightly in white bandages, a space ripped in the middle where an ice blue eye gazed out from a rim of utter black. White hair fell around the bandages and the rest of the form. The arms were crossed in the style of the Egyptian mummy, and more bandages covered the abdomen. The bandages continued downwards to the legs, wrapping them individually as though to allow for movement.

Large wings, batlike but for their sleek white color, were folded behind the creature's back. The bandages of the face did not meet the bandages of the shoulder, and there were gaps in the wrappings around the creature's body. Everywhere a gap was visible, there was no flesh underneath – no muscle, no bone, no framework, as though the bandages were wrapped around absolutely nothing.

As though it noticed it was being watched, the creature slowly turned its entire head downwards to stare at Mello, fixing an unblinking cyclopean gaze on the young man. The urge to scream disappeared, replaced by the urge to surrender consciousness.

Mello had always prided himself on his steel will. It took a great deal to intimidate him. It wasn't so much the appearance of the creature – after all, Sidoh had barely made him blink – as it was the aura radiating from it. It was an aura of pure, unadulterated emptiness, an emptiness from which death would be a blessed escape. Staring into the ice blue eye was like staring into Hell itself, and though Mello knew his eyes weren't working properly he could make out every horrific detail of the creature hovering above him now.

"Hello, Mihael Keehl." Neither visible mouth nor discernable movement of the jaw signified that it had been the creature that had spoken, and yet Mello was certain that it had. As the voice filled the room, the strangest sensation filled the blond, and he began to feel as though all his worries were washed away. The voice was distinctly male, yet it was the most angelic voice he had heard in his entire life. It echoed oddly, as though bouncing off the walls of his own mind rather than those of the room.

The creature turned his attention back to Light, though continued to address the burned man on the metal gurney. "This is spiraling out of control," he said slowly, shaking his head a bit. "A Life Note is not meant for this purpose… it is not a tool of destruction. The side effects of bringing a person back to life are inevitable, but the Note is not meant for revenge."

Slowly, the body began to rise – as the head was not actually connected to the shoulders, but more hovering a few inches above them, it stayed put. After a moment, the shoulders connected with the jaw and the head moved upwards, no space left for an assumed neck, and when the body stopped rising, the head continued to its original position.

As the creature floated over the gurney, Mello felt the horrendous cold pass over his abdomen to his right side, leaving his left side horribly, horribly hot. But he was too distracted to care. What the fuck was this thing?

"What the fuck am I?" the creature asked quietly, and Mello started, his body screaming in protest at the automatic reaction. The blond was positive he had not spoken, due to the gag around his mouth, but the creature had just repeated his thought.

"I, Mihael Keehl, am V'ko of the Hachi Tenshi. The Shiroi Tenshi, if you must know. And, yes, I mean 'Tenshi' as in Angel," he added, a note of amusement in his voice. "Not an angel in the sense of your Archangel, of course… You were thinking of Sidoh, a Shinigami of the Death Note. Just as the Life Note is the antithesis to the Death Note, so are the Tenshi to the Shinigami, though they greatly outnumber us. There are, as the name suggests, merely eight of us – eight Life Notes in existence, never really meant to fall into human hands but completely useless to all but humans," he said with an ironic laugh.

This was odd. But if the creature had some kind of telepathy, Mello would just have to isolate his thoughts into what he wanted to know. If this creature had answers… He shifted his gaze to it, pouring his thoughts out.

"I cannot tell you what will happen," V'ko said after a long pause as he listened to Mello, shaking his head slowly. "But I can only be seen by you, Mail Jeevas, and Yagami Light… if he recovers," the white creature said, looking at each in turn. "You see, while a Shinigami can be seen only by those who use the Death Note, a Tenshi can only be seen by those who are revived by the Life Note. The man who revived you cannot see me. Though he was, in fact, brought back to life by my Note, he relinquished the ability to see me the moment he brought Yagami Light back to life."

So… this creature was bound to the Life Note as Shinigami are bound to the Death Note. Mello was in pain, yes, but none great enough to hinder his thought processes that severely. Of course, there was always the possibility that, after the current events, he had simply gone insane. Yes, that was quite a likely scenario.

He certainly felt insane at that particular moment in time.

V'ko didn't respond to Mello further. Instead, he glided across the room to where Matt lay and peered down at him. The redhead's breathing was irregular, understandably, and as the Tenshi had gotten near him he had begun to shiver. After a moment, the creature backed up slightly before turning and floating over to Light. The blood had stopped flooding the ground about fifteen minutes ago, but the liquid still shone underneath the lights from the ceiling – they froze in solid puddles of red as V'ko passed over them, crystals of white appearing where the blood met the floor around the edges.

A click resonated through the room, the sound appearing to be louder due to the cold. Mello's eyes flicked to the open doorway that led to the experimentation room and, surely enough, a moment later L entered with a bag slung over his shoulder. He froze as he stepped in before frowning, noticing the severe cold spreading across the floor with his bare feet. He set the bag down and left again, and about five seconds later Mello heard the click of the heater turning on somewhere overhead.

Without speaking, V'ko hovered backwards into a corner and sat with his knees pulled up, his hair pooling around him on the ground as he stared. He still didn't touch the ground.

L re-entered and stared at Mello, before looking at Matt, then finally Light. Shrugging to himself, he picked the bag up again and began walking to where Light was before he froze again, staring at the pools of frozen blood. He cast Mello one more look before pressing down on the foot pedal of Light's bed and leaning him backwards. He picked up the arms and legs that had fallen to the ground and began situating them carefully, extracting stitch thread and surgical sewing equipment from the bag he had brought.

Mello turned his head away as L began to stitch Light's body back together.

---

How many days had it been? He wasn't keeping track anymore. He had gotten used to the idea, in the short time after Kira's death, that he wouldn't have to worry about these sorts of things for a very, very long time. He would just take a few easy cases, cruise along for a while, and recover after all the hell he had gone through during the Kira case.

Apparently, that was not meant to be.

Sighing to himself, Near twisted a strand of hair as he stared at the card house on the table in front of him, waiting for a report. He had sent a few of his best men out to see if they could locate anyone who looked even mildly suspicious to see if they could get any leads. Whoever had done the robbery was a professional, and more than likely had a criminal record of some kind.

"Who would do this…?" Near muttered, frustrated. A moment later, a phone rang and he felt the receiver pressed against his ear.

"This is N," he said calmly as he began to construct another house in front of the first.

"We think we may have found something," a male voice said. "We saw a man in the warehouse district, and he was carrying a large black canvas bag. He disappeared down an alleyway, and we followed him as best we could, but he went into a building and locked it. What do you want us to do?"

Near stayed silent for a few moments, thinking carefully. What did he want them to do? He wasn't sure. If that was the bastard who had done this, then he wanted the men to break into the building and just start shooting.

Mello must have worn off on him.

"Bug it, if you can," Near said, his voice revealing no doubt of whether or not he thought they could do it. "If it really is the one who did this, we need to find out what's going on and, if possible, why he did it. We don't have any leads to follow right now, so we're just going to have to work with what we've got, and that's not much."

"Sir."

The line went dead the next moment, and the phone was taken away.

Sighing, Near stared at the card in his hand, turning it over between his fingers. When they bugged that building, what would they find? Assuming that it was the man they were looking for, it was doubtless that they had found some kind of psychopath.

But there were all different kinds of psychopaths. Each one had to be handled differently, though all had to be handled carefully.

Sighing, Near rubbed his forehead. He just wanted to find who had done this, put them in jail, and call it good. It was a shame that it never happened like that.

Reaching up, he grabbed one of the cards at the bottom of his first card house and pulled it out, watching the cards fall silently.

He would find what was going on.

He knew that.

He was positive.


End file.
